


The widow

by AngriestPotato



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut, Slow Burn, bureaucratic savagery, just lowkey kind of 'i could always do it' sort of self comfort, mildly violent nightmares, not exactly suicidal thoughts?, of sorts, welcome to not coping at all town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12057489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngriestPotato/pseuds/AngriestPotato
Summary: In a perfect world Jack Morrison is just a man. He's not the media's clown or the people's flag, he's just your husband and you can grieve for him in peace.You, more than anyone, know this is not that perfect world.





	1. the incident

Your heart hadn’t stopped racing since you first felt the blast through your feet and looked out the window to see the structure shake. Then again you hadn’t really given it a chance, since you sprinted the full mile that separated the family housing from the actual Headquarters.

You didn’t know how so many people had gotten there so quick, and you didn’t know who had taken the photo. You suspected an agency photographer, not a newspaper one, since it was everywhere for the next week or so. You; standing across the street from the rubble, not that there was much street left to speak of, frozen and heaving, with ash or dust or whatever it was in the air falling around you like fucked up snow.

Later you couldn’t stand the thought that you might’ve been breathing in him in, what was left of him, as you gaped and mumbled his name like a prayer. So you didn’t think about it, tried at least.

But that wasn’t exactly something you could say in court. Not if you didn’t want to lose whatever shred of dignity you had left in front of the goddamn UN commission that couldn’t save your husband, yet was still determined to ‘investigate’ and ‘give closure’ to his death.

You wondered if they could give closure to your half empty house; if they could investigate the fucking hole in your chest. Maybe they’d want you to walk them through how you had screamed yourself hoarse when the first responders tried to shove you away from the site. How they tried to drug you; how they almost did before Reinhardt found you and his hand on your shoulder was the only thing to ground you through the panic attack that followed.

  
“Mrs. Morrison.”

The director took a noticeably kinder tone with you than with the other summoned for this hearing; he’d probably seen the picture. You didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended about it, but a part of you felt morbid satisfaction at Petras being here himself, looking uncomfortable; at least this had been enough to force him and his kin from their goddamn diplomatic thrones. Here they couldn’t wax poetic about moral conundrums and concentration of power, not with the ashes of Overwatch still sitting pretty in the lungs of everyone in the room.

  
“Did you happen to notice any significant change in your husband’s behavior in the past few months?”

Besides the sleepless nights and the bottled up stress, you assumed he meant; after all, Jack had been on edge for so long lately that it had become the new normal. He’d get home shoulders hunched and eyes on the floor, his head clearly still back in his office, if at all. Taking his mind off of things was harder and harder. Sex helped, a big meal did too.

You had spent nearly two years living for the small moments when he finally unclenched his jaw as he chewed; or when his kisses got sloppy, hands sliding warm against your skin, and a smile flashed across his face. Twenty or so months of finding him in short, deep rumbles of satisfaction and his warm breath over your shoulders in the early morning.

This job, this whole bureaucratic bullshit, had tried to warp Jack so close to the breaking point; but they hadn’t changed him, not at the core.

  
“No.” You answered, simply, and hated how your voice broke; loathed to be exactly what they expected of you.

“You used to live off base until January of last year,” a man a couple seats from the director piped up when he realized no one else would, “was there any special reason to move into family housing?”

“We wanted to spend more time together.”

  
This was by far the stupidest question they had asked you yet. What were you supposed to do when he called you at two in the morning sounding exhausted down to the bone and you couldn’t tell if he couldn’t sleep or had had a nightmare? If he was still at the office or alone in his room, bottling up the bullshit of the day?

You had started packing the same night he brought it up, half joking and suddenly shy, even if the official request took over six months to go through. And fuck what people thought of you; fuck your editor, mocking you for becoming an army wife. Who cared if your mother kept saying how much she appreciated Jack but also texting you reasons not to go, finding excuses you didn’t need. You were happy, you were trying; he put in the effort to make it home most of the week, to at least sleep together, and it was enough.

  
“There was no other reason?”

The man looked at you over his glasses, like you were deliberately hiding something from him. As if your short stilted answers throughout this whole shit show had been to personally antagonize their board.

“I loved him, I still… love him,” at least this time you sounded bewildered instead of broken, which was sort of a step up, “I just wanted to be with him.”

  
This was too sudden to be insulting, mostly because you never thought you’d be enough to catch the attention of the UN, particularly when you kept signing every article and essay with your maiden name to avoid this situation exactly. You had until that point figured that the whole mess of your public political stance was a thing mainly between you and Jack; and that, while you could be poison to one another’s career, keeping a low profile about your relationship was enough. Apparently you were wrong.

  
“Look I can take a guess at what you’re insinuating,” you wondered what had been the thing to get you on this man’s black list, your coverage of the Omnic Crisis or of the years after, “and I know how you see me and why that makes you uncomfortable, but I don’t know what to tell you…”

You could tell him that Jack and you had had your share of fights over omnic rights, and that all you ever wanted was to steal a little of his time from the organization he loved as much as he did you; that he had wanted to help even if he ran into walls, that he was a good man. That the sole idea of sabotage, of betraying Overwatch and blowing up the damn headquarters on purpose was so far removed that you were even having trouble comprehending the concept.

You kept that to yourself, though; the man leaned back in his chair, retreating his attention back to whatever notes he held.

The board dismissed you from the hearing not long after, but you didn’t leave; you couldn’t, and no one really stopped you from entering the covered mezzanine overlooking the room. From here you could very clearly see Reinhardt moving in to sit in the same uncomfortable, stiff backed chair you’d been moments ago through the two way glass. You were pretty sure this shadowed viewing chamber was more common than anyone wanted to acknowledge, no matter how surprising it was at first glance.

Your heels sounded like a firing squad in this quiet, and the stenographer wheeled around with a stoic look to shoo you out until he noticed who you were. He didn’t stop you either, after that.

  
“Mrs. Morrison,” he was young, about twenty and probably an intern, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

You nodded, said thanks; ‘cause he really didn’t have to say anything but he did anyway. You could appreciate politeness; he had probably seen that photo too.

“You are the one in the photo, aren’t you?” the boy confirmed your suspicions with an expression that was half pity, half excitement, “the Swiss girl.”

  
Great, the goddamn thing had a nickname, the true mark of a famous photo; you’d probably won whoever took it some awards by now. You weren’t even swiss, not that they had known that; by the looks of it they hadn’t even known why you were there at the base at all.

You nodded again and it made him shuffle in his seat to face you directly, uncertainty in his face and in his voice as he gave you his full name.

“I’m a journalism student.” He explained in a rush, “we’re taking an ethics course this semester and I was wondering if I could write a paper on the photo, and on, well, using your image as the face of the tragedy; if it was ethical at all to do it.”

  
The question damn near made you snort with laughter, which was a first these past couple of weeks; you remembered being like him, you probably still were like him for a lot of people no matter how much you tried to not be. Nosy, removed, a _vulture_.

  
“Sure,” you figured that at least some good could come from this, he had done you the courtesy of asking after all, and he paid for your permission with a boyish smile.

  
Then the board introduced Reinhardt and the silence returned to the mezzanine; the questioning started back again from the top.

“Lt. Wilhelm, you were present at the base on the day of the incident. Can you walk us through the timeline of it?”

  
You had heard this before, including Reinhardt’s heavy sigh before he began, he had told you all in an emergency medical assistance tent; but you settled down anyway. Maybe in this shadowed room with nothing but the steady tapping of the stenotype it would finally start feeling real.


	2. arlington

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truth be told, you hadn't even noticed the press.

When you woke up your limbs felt particularly heavy, like you had run a mile right before bed; lactic acid stiffened your muscles to the point of ache. The sun was high enough that it cast the warmth of mid morning across the room; which was weird, since the body right next to you usually left while it was still dark.

You shuffled, bumped your legs against Jack to try and mooch off his body heat. The morning was windy; you could feel it in the small, badly insulated, government issued walls. It wasn’t exactly a time you’d choose to question why exactly hadn’t Jack left for work yet, so you didn’t; you just grabbed a fistful of his shirt and ignored the uncomfortable brightness behind your eyelids.

  
“Sweetheart…”

  
His voice rumbled in his chest before you heard it, and in your half asleep state it seemed somehow like a miracle. Like something you should’ve held onto, clung to until your nails bit into skin and made your palms bleed; it occurred to you that you just didn’t cherish these moments as much as you could.

  
“Babe, you have to get up.”

Your whine in response got an affectionate chuckle out of him as you hid your head under the pillow, eyes still clenched shut. Jack followed, pulled himself into your space, curled around you on your side of the bed; and you couldn’t hide the smile pulling at your lips any longer.

It took a minute for your sight to focus, but when it finally did he was there, smiling back; the true smile that lit up his eyes.

  
“Morning,” your whisper was almost lost in the quiet darkness of this impromptu pillow fort, and you leaned in to nuzzle your nose against his, “lemme go wash my teeth.”

Jack didn’t answer, just weighed you down with an arm around your waist to keep you in bed and dragged you close so he could kiss you.

 

The wailing of an alarm woke you up for real this time; alone and coiled so tightly into the fetal position that it explained the muscle pain. You tried to take a deep breath; to untangle yourself from the sheets but your eyes filled immediately with stubborn tears.

You had no time for this; there was an empty casket and an actually quite pretty black dress, one that Jack used to like a lot, waiting for you. But if you moved at all you’d start screaming and if you started screaming you wouldn’t stop.

  
This wasn’t fair. He had come back to you, however weary, so many times; so many years of actual active duty, before and after you met him. And it had to be now, when he had been holed up in an office pretending to be a diplomat, when you thought you could breathe easy for the first time in a decade; that you were here, staring out at the endless green from the high window of your DVQ like this was some sort of honor.

Like it was a fucking honor to lie among tour buses and Boy Scout troops, resting forever under the curious gaze of patriotic tourists. You didn’t know how other families did it, how they chose to see Arlington and it’s neat little white rows of indifference; but you were somehow glad Jack wasn’t really in that coffin.

You squeezed your eyes shut, still uncomfortably curled in on yourself; you were always like this, it used to drive Jack mad, you had to cycle through all the bad scenarios to let yourself think of the good ones.

He’d be here, he’d be a hero; he had won his stop on the goddamn tours and spit in the face of every thinkpiece and ironic blogpost. It was good, this was good; you were good, you could do this.

  
Getting out of bed took a couple more minutes of carefully inching to the edge; a few more sobs to swallow, and it was already too late for coffee. Priorities, you told yourself; shower, dress, some sort of makeup. The mental list made it easier to just go through the motions, sort of.

Someone had offered you a stylist when you first made it to Myer-Henderson, you didn’t really know who he was; you had never seen him before even if he hugged you stiffly as soon as you stepped in the door. He had seemed under the impression that you wanted to look your best for the public memorial. A thought that completely disregarded the fact that it _was_ a memorial and you really didn’t give half a damn if a ponytail seemed too casual when someone you loved was going in the ground. Lucky him, grief didn’t quite give you time for petty grievances either; not yet at least. Maybe in a year or two you’d have to pause in the middle of doing the dishes with a ‘how dare he?’

That was if you were washing dishes a year from now; which was to say, if you were still alive a year in.

A knock on the door jolted you out of that guilty pleasure of a prospect; Reinhardt’s voice came muffled and much more subdued than you had ever heard it from the other side.

  
“Darling, are you ready?”

You opened the door, unable to contain a snort of watery laughter that threatened to turn into crying again.

“No.”

The idea of Reinhardt’s comforting warmth reaching for you was bone deep terrifying for a split second; and you hurried back into the room to check the mirror one last time before he could move to try. He hovered close instead as he walked you to the door; stayed at your side as you were ushered to the chapel, and this was why he was your favorite of all of Jack’s friends. Reinhardt was solid and true and cheerful, and he understood. At least he made you feel like he did; like you could just sit in silence and tune out most of the service because Winston on your other side was honest to goodness shaking and you couldn’t spare the attention to really take in the oppressive amount of pain in the room.

Later that very afternoon you’d look back on it as the last moment of quiet of the day and added it up as one more regret in your list. You should’ve really been thankful for the hushed heartache of the chapel, since at least you wouldn’t have to see every soul on Jack’s team flinch almost unnoticeably with every shot of the salute. And you wouldn’t have had to walk behind a sea of different uniforms, a horse and a cart; all for a box that held less of your husband than your unfinished tube of toothpaste at home.

In that dark, still chapel you wouldn’t have had to receive the infamous flag, perfectly folded; and the soft gloves of the hundredth man to give you his condolences today. You wouldn’t have had to see the sincere sadness in his eyes, and recognize him as someone you had run into at Headquarters more than once.

  
“Mrs. Morrison,” his low whisper was strained like he hadn’t been using his voice much these past weeks, and you cleared your throat in sympathy, “I’m sorry we couldn’t save Commander Morrison, I’m sorry we couldn’t find him, I’m sorry…”

The man –younger than Jack, younger than you– held your hands as you held the flag. Winston hiccupped; Reinhardt’s palm, big enough to cover the entire span of space between your shoulders, finally made contact and you broke down crying the most rabid, nausea inducing sort of anger you had ever felt in fat drops over the fucking triangle of fabric in your lap.

  
“I’m sorry too,” you managed to mumble in response.

  
You were sorry for this; for making a scene, for being there with him and the old lady and her card, who looked at you like she’d witnessed this a thousand times.

You were sorry for loving a man who could never be just yours, not even in death.

 

…

_Excerpt from ‘Death of a Hero’ originally published in the National Enquirer:_

_“…the emotional climax of the day came as a grieving Mrs. Morrison, a younger woman who had until now been kept under the radar, received the burial flag and was unable to contain her tears; this in clear contrast to her reported numbly calm demeanor at the Investigative Commission’s hearings._

_We can’t help but be reminded of other very public losses and the survivor’s behavior in front of the cameras; expectations that were even higher in Mrs. Morrison’s case by the early photo that catapulted her into being the face of this tragedy._

_When we as a people lose a father figure, as it happened a little over a century ago with President John F. Kennedy, we often rally around the widow as a way to live our own grief and to be joined under a single cause, however negative._

_Mrs. Morrison, on the other hand, has chosen to keep a low profile, turning to privacy to mourn even in the shared agony. She is not a mother, as evidenced by her long but barren marriage to one of the greatest figures of our time; and we, lost children, have nowhere to turn.”_


	3. gabriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You really did not have the kind of energy or money to try the circus act of an internet libel lawsuit.

By the time your then editor sent you down to cover the Australian conflict you had pelted him with enough coverage about the families of the omnics that had been twisted and betrayed by their own secure comm network that you knew he was doing it on purpose. He wanted you to see what omnics could do in battle; he was trying to bring his rebellious little reporter to heel.

He had assured you it’d be completely safe, you were supposed to be dropped far into the outback with a few other correspondents in an abandoned Liberation Front camp; the place had seen a few skirmishes but it wasn’t an active conflict zone. It was understood as perfect for introducing new blood to this kind of field work and as a sort of timeout for the couple of reporters in the group who already had experience. You recognized one of them, from a competitor magazine who had been covering more or less the same topics you had these past couple years, which confirmed your suspicions; this was, for all intents and purposes, detention.

Jack was livid out of principle; yes, he was worried sick, but it also rubbed him the wrong way that someone would put anyone under their charge in possible danger to make a point. He spent a high strung week walking you through recommendations in a series of urgent phone calls, in case something went wrong; and if you had been in the same country you would’ve kissed him until you couldn’t breathe.

  
Everything went wrong. Your group ended up getting caught with your proverbial pants around your ankles by the Liberation Front; the ALF had seen movement in one of their previous settlements and shot the entire camp to mincemeat without asking questions. Apparently no one had run that ‘completely safe’ thing by them, nor did they really give a damn about it.

You had been lucky not to catch a bullet, shielded by the biggest fucking ice box you had ever seen, but you still had to lie there and try to keep those who did alive and quiet until the ALF fell back.

Two reporters died, in the end; other three were in different states of injured and the remaining two and you somehow managed to carry them fifteen clicks across the bushland to the meeting point.

You were treated for cuts and bruises, made it to Switzerland and wrote a more or less chronological account of the whole shitshow before the sabotaged core blew radioactive waste all over the Outback by the next night. In other words, that was about as long as you had Jack alternately holding you close and shaking with rage before he was called in to try and figure out Overwatch’s official response to the new nuclear wasteland down under.

  
It was your first time in family housing; a little low bungalow empty of anything except basic appliances and a comfortable bed. Setting you there had been so rushed neither you, nor Jack had had time to at least buy some sort of food or clothes; and now, almost 48 full hours after you heard the first shot, you realized you didn’t much want to do it. It was much easier to just stay under the covers and ignore the hunger pains until you fell asleep again, then waking up two hours later and repeat the process. There was no one there to stop you after all, and if that goddamn sorry bastard of an editor wanted content from that fucking trip he could go and play target for the ALF himself.

It was heavy footsteps that stirred you at some point in the middle of the afternoon, not Jack’s, he usually walked everywhere like he was in a hurry; these were slower, a very steady, very calming rhythm that might’ve lulled you back to sleep if they hadn’t stopped at the doorway.

  
“It wasn’t your fault.”

You finally looked up at the sound of that voice, half tangled in a sheet, face swollen with excess of sleep. Gabriel Reyes was the last person you would imagine coming here to see you; most of the time both of you were uncomfortably aware of how similar your personalities were and what that said about Jack.

“What?” Your own voice croaked with disuse, the question hoarse and a little wheezy.

“I saw you when you got here,” Reyes leaned on the doorway, crossed his arms but kept his tone low and gentle, “I’d know that look anywhere. It’s not your fault.”

  
You gaped, caught between trying to process the sudden lump in your throat and finding a way to make yourself coherent. You were one of the few with experience in conflict areas, you should’ve known this wasn’t going to turn out fine; you should’ve told them to keep quiet and you should’ve recognized that first, lone, warning shot for what it was.

“It’s _not_ your fault, you’re a victim too.”

  
Gabriel didn’t patronize you, he didn’t think you were ridiculous or self obsessed; he just walked in the room with some of Ana’s clothes and even a pair of disposable underwear from the med bay in a gym bag. He sat on the edge of the bed, tugged lightly on the back of your neck until your forehead met his shoulder and you sort of melted into a mess of tears and rather embarrassing mumbles.

He waited patiently until you changed out of Jack’s shirt, made you sunny side ups and then drove you to the store. He made you laugh until your sides hurt and didn’t comment on how it was tinged with hysteria.

Their deaths were ruled accidental, which was a very easy, simple word for the UN committee to throw around since it wasn’t the people they loved that suddenly weren’t there anymore.

_  
Accidental_.

  
You stood at Reyes’ gravestone, much quieter than Jack’s; lonelier, too. You repeated to yourself what he told you, the hard learned lesson of their world, to see if you could manage to believe it. It wasn’t your fault; it wasn’t theirs either, or Reinhardt’s, or Angela’s, or Winston’s.

You sure as goddamn hell wished you could’ve done something about it either way.

Your relationship with Gabriel was always a tightrope act, both of you striving to avoid the pitfall of your feelings for Jack. Still, being there felt a surprising lot like having Reinhardt squeezing you tight before he boarded the plane back to Germany. Like knowing that you didn’t have a home to go back to since, in your heart, you had already torched the entire country of Switzerland and salted the ashes.

The engraved name couldn’t hear your thanks, the same way Jack’s couldn’t hear you begging and pleading and raging at the universe for taking him. This plot was as empty as the one with your last name a little ways away; but you said them anyway, hoped they reached him some way.

  
Reyes’ tombstone was cool to the touch when you crouched to tap your fingers against it, and it helped ground you, a little, enough to make a smile tug at your lips. Maybe that was why you only noticed the man hanging back a few feet in your peripheral vision when you turned to leave.

You saw him steel himself, one almost imperceptible deep breath and a swift pull at the ID around his neck; the unmistakable signs of the press. He was rather polite when he asked for an interview, and you vaguely remembered seeing the name of the magazine he worked for, which you suspected was mostly online celebrity gossip. You told him you’d think about it, wondered why in the hell would his kind of readers would waste time on you.

The man insisted, following you across Arlington while launching into an unofficial questionnaire. Why were you there? Why were you visiting Reyes? What was your relationship with Reyes? Was it true that he and Jack had been fighting? Was the fighting about you?

You laughed, a short, sharp chuckle like a dog’s bark; and you didn’t stop walking, you got into your car with a cold, numb anger creeping into your bones.

  
The article you found later that day, and yes you had googled your own name, did a great job at appearing neutral but toeing the line into offensive. It was also not the only piece you found, not even the only one on that particular site; there seemed, in fact, to be a certain tabloid obsession with you.

That goddamn Swiss picture came back to haunt you. Your blank expression between a grief stricken Reinhardt and a frankly nauseous looking Winston on the steps of the UN building where the hearings took place fanned a fire of speculation that now raged over that private cemetery smile.

You looked so sad in that one, not sadder than in the stereotypical military widow with a flag photo; but that was a much more uncomfortable display of emotion, that wasn’t the kind of picture this site could dissect. The trick of the morbid gossip was moderation, to adhere to an internal set of rules, however flexible; you wanted to avoid making your readers feel like vultures but you wanted them to taste the meat as an afterthought on their gums.

This was a shining example of that; the author, you didn’t know if it was the same man you saw at Arlington, or even an intern making less than minimum wage, offered a detailed description of the affection in your smile. They theorized why no photo showed that kind of softness when it came to Jack; while the comments pointed out the possible physical differences between Reyes and Jack in a way that wasn’t just cruel but also vaguely racist.

  
You wanted to scream; wanted to howl that if you let yourself think too much about your husband’s grave, it made it hard to breathe. That looking at the cursed little concrete rectangle with his name made so much affection, so many memories, crowd to the forefront of your mind that you feared you might actually suffocate. And that no, you weren’t personally acquainted with Reyes’ cock, for fuck’s sake.

You would’ve paid to grab that bastard at the cemetery by the neck and spit in his face; to make him look at you as you explained how you loved Jack so deeply that it felt like you didn’t know how to do much else now. And how about he tried this kind of loss himself? Maybe he could give you fucking pointers then.

You shattered a hotel salt shaker against the wall instead, cried your rage into a pillow until you could feel your heartbeat behind your eyes. And when your voice finally gave out at about two in the morning, you packed the rental car, covered your stay and took for the I-495 as fast as you could get away with.

If you couldn’t stop these fuckers you could at least make them pay travel expenses all the way to Indiana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know exactly what kind of comments I'm talking about


	4. jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> your political integrity lasted for about as long as it took for Jack to bring up make up sex

The ‘serious’ publications at least waited ‘till the end of the month to find you; but those barbs you were used to, somewhat.

You knew these fuckers in politics and their false friendly smiles; you were one of them mostly, since that was usually were the goldmines were. Stories where you could dig and dig and keep fucking digging until you were up to your shoulders in shit, but at least you had the most pieces of the puzzle; and putting that together, _knowledge_ , always felt like armor for you.

Jack, though? He gave you tunnel vision, since the moment you met him, you suspected; even if it had been easy in the beginning to see him and Overwatch as separate things, you were well aware of how those two concepts had gone blurry the more time you spent apart, especially in the last few years.

You had stayed as far as you could from any claim related to corruption and mismanagement in the organization; not that anyone would’ve wanted you there. Every swing taken to Overwatch felt like a direct threat to Jack; and by the time you got to Switzerland permanently, you were so starved of him that you couldn’t have seen past him if you had wanted.

Which now left you feeling naked and raw in front of people who knew you; who had met you, tangentially. People who wouldn’t believe you when you said you didn’t know a damn thing about your husband’s job beyond how it affected your sorry, selfish ass; no matter how true it was.

The reporter this time was a man you knew, were friendly with, actually; that assured you, for what it was worth, that he’d do you the courtesy of salting your wounds to your face. That was why you had agreed to the interview this time; maybe if they realized just how little you knew, they’d leave you alone.

So you sat there at the kitchen table with him and a couple cups of coffee, took the cigarette he offered and behaved when he asked you if it was true the tabloids had run you out of D.C.

  
“I didn’t think they’d care much about me, or Jack, honestly,” which was to say, you hadn’t been in any sort of shape to see they would.

It had become clearer and clearer in the silence of the car and even more setting up in this place; Jack was larger than life –‘monumental’ you had said when you first saw the statue, and it wasn’t a compliment– everyone wanted a piece of him, yourself included. He had simply been too intimidating in life for them to get this close, or maybe you had just existed in his shadow, shielded from it all.

The nagging thought of him protecting you from tabloid press on top of everything else kept you up at night in this new bed he had never slept in.

“Please, Morrison’s perfect tabloid bait; blonde, blue eyes, attractive. Died in a freak accident and as part of a muddy organization? He’s the American dream gone to shit.”

  
You laughed, either out of hysterics or for the sudden familiarity. This asshole didn’t use his widow gloves, that was for sure. You thought you might’ve appreciated it, once; it was actually only one more person who didn’t know you or your husband fitting you in whatever shape they wanted. This reporter had worked with you, he got paid by the same editor; he thought you were strong, accustomed enough to the job that he didn’t have to use his filter.

He wasn’t an idiot, though; he stopped himself with a cough and spat a little coffee over the pale wood of the table, ran his hand through his hair. His eyes seemed apologetic enough when he finally looked back up at you, and you were just too damn tired.

“I’m sorry,” he was, that was easy enough to see. If you kicked him out of the house right now he was fucked.

“Look, I didn’t know Morrison, not personally. But he…, he kinda made it hard to think of him as human.”

  
You nodded, leaning back and using a cloud of smoke as an excuse to get some space between you. You got it, you didn’t have to like it but you understood: Strike Commander Morrison was a symbol.

“But that’s why we’re here right? The UN commission said you didn’t know much about the whole Overwatch mess, but I find that hard to believe from you…”

You watched in silence as the man riffled through his notes, and fuck, you were not above making him squirm a little more.

  
“Did they publish that?”

The document sat right at that very moment open in your tablet upstairs; you had read it over and over until you memorized the illustrated reconstruction of the collapse. You knew only a few hearing transcripts had made it there and yours wasn’t one of them.

“There’s a certain big name that thinks you were playing dumb,” he turned his phone so you could see the dog face of that one man at the edge of the table during your hearing, “can’t say I blame him for being pissed, though.”

It was a friendly jab instead of criticism and it did pull a smile out of you around your cigarette; the photographer pushed the button in your peripheral.

“Fuck you, I don’t know a thing.”

“What about King’s Row?” he took his chance and ran with it, “you were caustic about Overwatch’s intervention.”

  
You remembered that one article; you hadn’t been caustic, that had been outright hateful, and it drew a line between you and Jack for a while. He had come home for the first time in almost a full week to find that one of the most heartless, exhaustive lists of everything fucked up about the Null Sector situation had come from no other than his own wife.

“It was necessary,” Jack pretty much barked at you; and the sharp, curt tone matched his tense posture as he stared you down from the foot of the bed.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t necessary,” you sat up from the pillows, straightened your own back for the fight and held your ground, “I said it was avoidable, which it _was_.”

“They took hostages, even one of those fucking monks you like so much.”

That had been pretty much yelling, but Jack still walked in the room and started shedding clothes, rummaging around for a towel. You wished, in hindsight, to have reached out for him; to tell him it wasn’t his fault and you would never think it was. You had just been too wound up; angry at everything and anyone because it was all supposed to be peace from here on. Where the fuck was the unity those Tekharta monks kept waxing poetic about? It was all the same as during the Crisis and you were the biggest damn fool on Earth for believing it wasn’t.

“If you make them believe there’s no heroes to spare for them, they’ll make their own” you had shouted at Jack’s back as he made his way to the shower, “and this is what we’ve taught them heroes are: _violent resistance_.”

  
The slamming of the door was the most final sound you had ever heard, and when Jack came out he got in bed in complete silence and rolled over to face way from you; you reciprocated. It went on for days, the cold remarks and short responses. You barely talked at all and you couldn’t know if it was wearing him down as much as it did you, but you were the first one to crack. Lying next to him with his warmth so close, his back barely touching yours, was so painful you had to speak up.

“Jack?” your voice was so small that night, it was surprising even to you, “I miss you.”

Your chest tightened in the split second of quiet, your face prickled and your throat closed up because you hadn’t even paused to realize how true that statement was up till you said it out loud. Jack turned and reached for you so fast that you couldn’t quite respond to his kiss until he was pretty much pulling you under him. He mumbled against your skin that he missed you too, and his voice was as rough as yours, his hands just as desperate.

He was much more vocal than usual, groaning for you as soon as you hooked your legs around his waist; he moaned low every time you did, already rolling his hips against yours, holding you a good few inches off the mattress so you could feel the promise of his growing erection. You could do very little, pressed this close to his chest, except beg for him and kiss him; you were pretty sure you described in great detail exactly how you wanted him inside you, how you wanted him to wreck you. And you couldn’t fight that oppressive feeling in your chest until he pushed his cock inside you and all you felt was full and choked by a pleasure so violent it was acid in your veins.

His rhythm was borderline cruel, your nails digging into his back and arms; and you loved these times when he didn’t hold back and you got to scream out his name, almost squirming with how close your orgasm was. Jack angled his thrusts as soon as he first heard you calling out for him and one of his hands went to your hair, pulling gently as he slowed his pace and bottomed out as deep as he could go. He asked you to say his name again; you did so many times it stopped making sense.

Neither of you lasted long, and no word was mentioned about King’s Row after Jack came inside you and you could finally sleep with his arm heavy around your waist for the first time in weeks.

  
This reporter didn’t get to know that, though; he didn’t come looking for it either. You told him instead that Overwatch presented systemic problems beyond whatever Jack or anyone could solve; that it was especially useless because UN assholes like the one little bespectacled dickbag that sent him here were purposefully and knowingly declawing it.

You told him that the omnic problem was the same as it had been every time borders were threatened, except this time the borders were our own biology; that there would always be those who rejected the concept of otherness even if it was only in their heads.

You told him you were done, jokingly commented that you might as well start growing something in this property again. Then you walked him and his photographer out the door, ran upstairs and masturbated till your orgasm showed up pretty much out of obligation and you ended up crying for an hour in one of Jack’s shirts again.


	5. longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had never felt both this disjointed and monothematic at the same time in his life, but then again this wasn't his life anymore.

Jack made a mental note to pick up as many biotic fields as he could from the Overwatch facilities he’d marked out; he even scribbled it in the notes of his map, displayed much smaller than he’d like in the simple tablet he managed to dig out of the rubble. The things were truly a medical miracle, he was aware of that, but he had never experienced it firsthand, not to this extent.

His wounds had closed in record time, scars that normally would’ve taken years to form were healed in months; and now he was only empty and sore. Though, maybe it had been just the SEP instead that saved him; you used to joke about sending flowers to whoever had come up with the program for making him heal so fast, after all.

He shifted uncomfortably in a chair too small for his frame by the corner of the safe house, the one closer to whatever hotspot he had been mooching off of all this while. He should’ve laughed at that dumb joke more often, he thought; should’ve kissed you more when you looked so relieved over the teeniest tiniest wounds disappearing into new flesh in days.

He kept a running commentary of minor regrets; filled his time with it because it was easy. Busying his mind on a laundry list of little things was all that kept him sane at the moment.

You had always hated when he did it, this thinking in abstracts to spare himself the emotional exhaustion of personal approach. You, beside him and warm in his arms; you in bed, smiling and half asleep and _his_.

You were one of the specifics he dreaded most when it came to dealing with what happened. Especially since he couldn’t come back now; it was too late and too dangerous and he had to figure out who the fuck decided it was fine to take his life and piss all over it. He couldn’t get you involved in all of that; so he had been trying to skirt around everything about you, around the guilt that reared its ugly head whenever he thought of you.

  
Still, the built in news app in this damn tablet taunted him; he could ignore everything with his name on it, even with Overwatch and Reyes’, but yours? The headline with your name – _his_ name, something shared– was much more tempting; and that made sense, it was you after all. The blind impulse to keep you, to interact, to simply exist close to you had been a constant in his life for over a decade; he couldn’t fight it anymore now than when he dragged you all the way to Switzerland.

At least he had had those last two years of you next to him, in the same house like a normal marriage, and he willed them to be some sort of comfort as the app pulled up the page of the paper you regularly wrote for. The clean layout of political analysis and current events seemed stuffed to the gills with you and all the things he at some point had started associating with you. Except you were full of heart, so damn ready to open yourself to others that you considered it vulnerability, no matter how brave he thought it was, or how nuts it could drive him at times.

You had once gotten the notoriously media distrustful Winston to give you an interview, and eleven years from the day, Jack could see every detail of your nervous fidgeting as if it had happened that very afternoon.

Whoever had written about you, though, was much more methodical; from the wording to the way they introduced you as _Strike Commander Jack Morrison’s widow_. A title, earned through active service like his own.

  
Your face was doing something between a smile and a snarl in the photo right at the top, a cigarette caught in your lips. He knew that expression, could almost hear the snort that followed and the ready curse at the tip of your tongue; it was a strange show of trust, if you were swearing, you were comfortable. It left him caught in the middle ground between relief and jealousy.

It took you over two years to smoke in his presence. It wasn’t until after the first night he spent in your bed –and he hadn’t been that bone deep content, tired and sweaty in someone else’s sheets, in a while– that you started to swear around him.

Jack forced his mind to focus on the rest of the photo, to take a step back before he either dropped the tablet or hurled it across the room; and that was when he recognized the background floating up from the deepest parts of his memory.

  
You were in his kitchen, his parents’ kitchen. The one where he had kissed his first girlfriend in a rush of adrenaline that left them both giggly; but, if he tried looking back on it now, he was older and it was the ghostly impression of your breathless laughter that he heard muffled against his lips.

He had always wanted to take you there, had figured at some point he’d make the time to show you that house himself; living in it was much more of a reach, a possibility he never allowed himself to hope for. But he wanted it, fuck, he ached for it to the ridiculous extreme of super imposing you over his patchy memories of it. He almost laughed at the twisted fucking irony of it; he’d been desperate to leave the place once, just to end up sitting half the world away wishing he was drinking coffee in that kitchen with you.

He’d give half his life to hold you, he would give it all for fuck’s sake, but that was something he had already lost. You probably wouldn’t even want to look at him if you knew he had spent over six months holed up in a safe house in Switzerland instead of letting you know he was alive.

For now, his ring was still on your finger, and he couldn’t help but run his thumb over the near unnoticeable gold band glinting against your coffee cup. He’d only worn the match when he wasn’t on duty; it was just uncomfortable to have it under his gloves. You hadn’t really minded, not as long as he came back home to it –to you– or so you had said.

He could’ve worn it on a goddamn chain around his neck; he could have a little part of you instead of having to stare at a picture. Or have it slowly dawn on him how the shoulder line of your shirt in it was a couple inches too low over your arm because it had originally been his.

His hands itched, for what, he couldn’t put into words; but he clicked through, obsessed over the interview instead. He attempted to read between the lines to gauge your state of mind, smiled at your suggestion of starting up the farm again like you had made it to him and not to a reporter who wasn’t aware you had managed to kill a succulent once.

  
The next article in his eventual rabbit hole of press coverage opened with you in Arlington Cemetery, looking down at your lap and clinging to the flag.

  
God, he loved that dress. You had worn it to the airport one time, had driven to pick him up after your work day in it and he could remember so clearly driving back home himself with his palm over the soft skin of your thigh. He didn’t know why you had had it on since your work clothes weren’t usually this formal, he didn’t really think he ever asked. He did recall it being a nightmare, buttons on the front and then a zipper on the side; but he had somehow gotten it off you anyway, your naked body pressed against him all the sweeter for how much effort it had taken.

In the picture, on the other hand, your shoulders were hunched and you were gasping for air; he couldn’t have missed the pull of your diaphragm, he could feel it as his own. And he didn’t realize he was actually crying himself until you blurred into a black blob over a green background in his hands.

His name in your voice was another phantom in this silent room. He clicked on, to the next article, to the next news site, all the way to the tabloids. He made himself look long and hard at every single photo of you, to witness his own fucking cruelty.

  
He saved that first picture; pretended he could carry you with him that way, surround himself the way you had done with him. He threw the uncomfortable chair across the room for good measure, hard enough to dissolve into splinters immediately, and had to stand frozen and heaving for a minute lest he started clawing at his own face just to do _something_.

He should’ve been quieter, his brain picked up the laundry list of little things right back; though it wasn’t like it mattered when he was pretty much walking out of this place for good

The mask fit strange and alien over his features, but he still had to manage to get himself into a plane to D.C. so he figured that was the least of his problems.


	6. soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you sleep next to a certain body for long enough you can't easily forget how it moves

The old lady down the road had told you, as you waited in line at the supermarket, that for about a year she’d still see her wife around the house like an after image every time she closed her eyes. You had stood there at a loss, trying to will your face out of the numb shock it had locked itself in; you still weren’t used to being recognized or to random acts of weird kindness, and more importantly, you had never seen Jack like that.

Maybe it was just that you had never lived with Jack in this house, even if was more his than yours; perhaps you were used to be without him for long periods of time and your brain had decided this was like any other deployment. Or maybe you spent so much time baking in order to keep the house some sort of warm that you hadn’t had time to hallucinate Jack in the room with you.

You saw Jack in the video, though. It was a grainy clip from a security camera, Arlington’s security camera, and the man in it could only be seen from a distance but he _moved_ like Jack.

The journalist who brought it had showed up out of the blue, which usually meant you would’ve told her to go fuck herself and make a fucking appointment at least. But she had caught you coming back from dumping most of your cookie surplus on the future version of yourself three houses down; had told you she didn’t want an interview or an article. She said what she needed was your professional opinion, and it was much harder to say no without the front door as a buffer.

So you let her in, considered offering her cookies too, but then figured treats should be earned, after all.

  
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” she started as soon as she stepped in, rushing to set her laptop down, “it’s just… I think…”

“Coffee?”

You motioned at her to sit down, interrupted her long enough for her to put her head in her hands with a long suffering groan.

“I’m sorry, I’ve just been thinking about this for too long and I know the implications are unbelievable and I’m _sorry_ …”

“I can’t really tell if I accept your apology if you don’t spill,” you sat across from her with the coffee maker gurgling away in the background and the smile on your face seemed to surprise her.

You liked her, like the ghost of your own career; she didn’t quite remind you of yourself but you knew how nerve wracking those assignments were, not the first ones, but the ones that mattered personally. She was a step closer to sugar cookies with every facial expression.

  
“There was a bombing last weekend, I don’t know if you saw it?”

Oh, you already didn’t like where this was headed. You had seen it, Jack’s survivor’s benefits were nothing to scoff at, but you still had to work; even if you hadn’t written for print in years, you had to keep up with news anyway. And that explosion had given you particular trouble; you had glossed over it, refused to see the clips of it because a part of you could taste dust the moment you thought about it.

You knew the basics: the building belonged to one of the biggest international banking institutions, the blast had decimated the three floors at the top that housed debt records; there’d been no casualties, only a handful of actually very mild injuries. The biggest loss had been thirty years of records, of which there were copies stored on a backup server; a backup server that was subsequently blown up a few hours later, too. Just enough time for a single individual to make the trip there.

You hummed out a yes anyway; the woman turned her laptop around so you could see a still frame from those security clips you hadn’t played. In it a blur of a man seemed to be sneaking out of the server room, a big, glaring 76 emblazoned on his back.

“They call him Soldier 76,” her voice sounded somewhat distant as she pulled the computer back, like her mind was already somewhere else, “for the jacket, and… the way everything was carried out, with military precision.”

The screen was once again shoved your way, this time on a clip of a different security camera; and this you recognized, the rows and rows and rows of white headstones in the waning light of the sunset.

“I have a friend at Arlington. They sent me this, it’s from the same day.”

  
The shot showed the same man walking through the graves, his back to the camera and the numbers in clear view. He appeared to know exactly where he was headed and he made his way there with hurried, heavy steps.

The woman sitting in front of you provided commentary as you watched, but you couldn’t quite pay as much attention as you should; you knew this stride like you knew your own, had seen it a million times over the years.

“He didn’t come in through the visitor center; no one knows _how_ he got in, actually. But the grave he visited was your husband’s.”

You hummed again, noncommittal; that really didn’t mean a goddamn thing, everyone could go see Jack’s name engraved on a concrete slab, a lot of people _did_ , he had a fucking spot on the official tour of the place. Then the man paused, shoulders forward like he was preparing to sprint, before he got up and left; and you had to bite back a gasp at the sharp mental image of Jack, hunched slightly and vaguely intimidating in a way that made your stomach flip flop. In the memory he smiled, slow and mischievous, only to rush at you, picking you up by the waist and throwing you gently onto the bed.

  
“I think that man _is_ your husband.”

The whisper of the woman brought you back to the Morrison kitchen, to her eyes trained on your face and waiting for an answer; you got up to pour the coffee instead.

“So that’s the kind of ‘professional opinion’ you wanted,” you filled two cups, no matter how aware you were that the sudden nausea at that goddamn thought wouldn’t let you drink a drop.

She was right, the implications were unbelievable.

The idea was like that mile sprint the day of the Swiss base explosion. Your lungs burned and you had misplaced your stomach completely, and you couldn’t _stop_ ; tears held back solely by the desperation to get there, see what had happened for yourself.

  
You remembered clear as day leaning into Reyes’ shoulder mumbling away your panic after the ALF fiasco. ‘ _I couldn’t die out there, I couldn’t do this to Jack, he’d have to id my body, Gabe, I couldn’t, I couldn’t’_.

The nausea solidified into something more like a weight in your chest; still, your head felt like a balloon, a second away from floating off.

  
“No!” The woman looked up, slightly panicked, “both? I guess? I just don’t know if the story’s worth it.”

She stared into her mug, sighed deeply; if your empathy hadn’t been compromised at the moment you would’ve offered some words of comfort, or so you liked to believe. Instead, all the kindness you could offer was to not reach for Jack’s old handgun, kept unloaded but close for the exact purpose of shooing the most dogged out of the house.

“I’m not exactly a source you should trust, on both accounts,” you tried the coffee, forced yourself to swallow, “whatever I can tell you will be biased and emotionally driven.”

The woman nodded, still looking down, like a bobhead doll.

“Find yourself a forensic expert and clearer footage and if you can wait for that and still want to do it, then the fucking story’s worth it,” your voice sounded weird even to you, automatic, as if your mouth was only broadcasting someone else’s words. “If it’s true it’s big enough to sway an editor into waiting for it, if it isn’t your career’s down the drain.”

“So I can…?” she straightened up almost immediately, eyes shining only to meet the emptiness that had a habit of working its way into your expression lately.

“No, I don’t want to see you again and I don’t want my name even remotely close to this.”

Having you associated to this in any way did not help a soul, you knew it in your bones; and you would rather leave the gas on overnight before becoming the crazy widow. You would not be known for seeing ghosts and after images; no. You were too angry a person for that; you were going to figure out exactly how much of this bullshit theory held by your own damn self if it killed you, and you almost did wish it ended up killing you.

“But I…”

“Look,” the weight in your chest turned into burning, and the inflection came back all at once into your voice so you were almost shouting that first syllable, “I only care as far as wishing you don’t end up writing for the National Enquirer or its ilk, and, small mercies, this is a Stand Your Ground state. You want cookies for the road?”  
  
You sent the woman on her way, dragging her feet with a napkin full of sugar cookies and a quick glimpse of the P320. You weren’t sure if the phone number scribbled in one of your old journals would still even work but you rushed to dial, running your thumb over Reyes’ handwriting.

The dial tones seemed unending but they finally clicked into nothing but expectant silence, the line picking up the sound of distant cars.

“I can’t believe you kept this number, McCree.”

“Morrison?”

You laughed out of sheer relief because if someone could give you a sure foothold, a place to start, that was Gabriel’s kid.


	7. the search

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for such a big man the Soldier was sure goddamn slippery

No matter how many years had passed since the last time you saw Jesse McCree, you were still convinced he was a living furnace, standing in the biting cold morning in nothing but a sarape while you shivered, bundled up in two sweaters. It was a sort of comfort to see that some things weren’t about to change.

“It’s been a long time, flaco”

You called out, watching as he shifted his stance just slightly, grass crunching with frozen dew under his boots. He shot from the hip, his upper body tilted back slightly, and it occurred to you that you might’ve been giddy with relief, since you couldn’t stop smiling at his posture. McCree had been kind enough to drop by, all jingling spurs, and not think you were rambling crazy with grief; he had just helped decimate your liquor cabinet and made himself at home on the couch.

“No one‘s called me that in ages, darling,” came the answer over his shoulder, something in his voice just short of a chuckle.

He pulled the trigger as he spoke and the shot hit the can dead center from an ungodly distance. You clapped.

This was easy, laughing at the effort he had been putting in teaching you how to shoot moderately straight, like he had once promised before he left Blackwatch. Jack had pulled you close to his side that time, clearly uncomfortable with the idea; in hindsight, you didn’t really know if it had been the shooting or Jesse he had been worried about.

“Well, you’re not much of a flaco anymore,” you teased, moved to take his place and aim. “When I first met you, you were so skinny your head looked oversized.”

“That’s big talk, Morrison. You feeling mighty mean with that gun aren’t you?”

Your shot knocked over the nearest can, but in close inspection turned out to have only grazed it.

“Not really,” you admitted, setting the can down again.

“That’s ‘cause you suck at it.”

Your laugh didn’t quite sound completely natural to you yet, but you were glad enough to have not forgotten how to do it.

  
McCree left you the next day with a long, tight hug, swaying you in place on the front porch until you giggled and promised to send him a bottle of bourbon for new years; you figured he’d find a way to that wherever he was, if you did send it. Left behind was also a map, squirreled away from an Overwatch server to your tablet; and the knowledge that whoever this Soldier was he was clearly Overwatch trained, and old school at that.

Neither Jesse nor you mentioned the possibility, but it hung heavy over both of you. Even if he didn’t recognize the minute movements you thought you did, even if he had been trained by Reyes and not Jack, he could see it in _you_.

You couldn’t help but tense up whenever you mentioned the strange nickname the man had won himself and you were pretty sure you started holding your breath every time you hit play on the Arlington security tape; you were an open book.

You started packing as soon as you stepped back into the house and McCree couldn’t be seen but like a little moving dot in the distance. You tried at least, before it quickly became very obvious that you didn’t own any bag that could step up to the task anymore, unless you raided the last unsealed box in the corner of the closet. It had gone untouched from the start, pretty much hidden under clothes, waybill and all; it was, after all, the only box that hadn’t come from the house, you had expected to never need a thing from it.

If it hadn’t been for the effort it must’ve taken to salvage and identify Jack’s stuff from the wreckage, you would’ve taken the damn thing out and made a campfire out of it. And now here you were, checking through the list of items they’d been kind enough to attach, wondering if a sports store bag would be as reliable as military issued duffels.

The thought was on the verge of physically painful, an irrational sort of nostalgia forcing you out of the room, away from the fucking box and the neat piles of folded clothes over the bed.

You paced around the kitchen, trying to steer your mind from overthinking the borgian implications of this. You had been wearing Jack’s shirts almost exclusively for months, what difference could this really make?

You took a long sip of your coffee – spiked, in McCree’s honor– only to see a small piece of paper flutter out from under the mug with the cowboy’s scribbles, hurried but clear:

‘ _Don’t be a stranger, sweetheart. You have my number._ ’

The endearment pulled at you, and you were almost mad at the echoes and signs this fucking day had decided to dump on you, because you didn’t believe in signs, goddammit; so the fact that they were there and laughing in your face was sort of offensive on their part.

You shook your head like a dog, downed your coffee and shoved the note in your pocket; you composed an email to Reinhardt while you were still productive, too. Figured the more people knew what you were attempting to do, even if you kept it vague, called it ‘following a story’, the safer you’d feel.

Then you steeled yourself, dug out Jack’s old kitbag, embroidered with his name – _your_ name– and stuffed it with whatever you thought you might need. You checked that everything was turned off and finally walked out of the house, bag over your shoulder. You had seen Jack do this so many times that you could imagine how you looked crossing the threshold as if you were stepping in his footsteps.

Hope nagged at you like a faraway ache, and you tried your best to squash it. You weren’t setting out looking for your husband; you were hunting down Soldier 76, which was an entirely different animal.

 

The latest target in the man’s hit list had been a French law firm, one that made a rather unsavory name for themselves for the defense of a group of war criminals that had slowly taken over Dorado and ran it like slumlords for most of the Crisis. The attack brought to light internal communication that very plainly stated that every soul there had been fully aware of the depth of the scumbaggery taking place during those years. It completely shattered the claim that the assholes were only trying to survive and got caught up in the business, pressured by rival gangs to continue escalating the violence in order to defend their turf.

You went down your own list, fighting to remember anyone Jack might’ve ever ranted about, to see if you could find a pattern. The law firm matched perfectly in what was slowly but surely becoming a map of your husband’s convictions, a sort of cartography of grudges. That alone justified splurging on international flight twice, but you couldn’t stop bouncing your leg as the airport wifi struggled to load. You needed more.

Your editor had been ecstatic when you called, said he was glad you had found your passion again and agreed to send you anything he had on Soldier 76, which ended up being an archive growing by the minute. You weren’t sure how he took you dropping off the face of the Earth mere hours later, but that had honestly been pushed to the back burner.

Every article, every column and analysis told the same story; the man was efficient, precise and surprisingly non lethal. French media claimed he had taken wildly varying amounts of money to take down gangs, run of the mill urban thugs and low tier druglords, on the side. He had to make a living, you supposed.

You took a lap around the conveyor belt to kill time and busied yourself with McCree’s map of loot heavy Overwatch facilities. If your hunch was right –it _had_ to be– this would be the first time you wouldn’t be a day too late since you left the Morrison farm. The Soldier had slipped through your fingers more than once, as if he knew he had you on his tail; most recently, hauling ass out of Paris just the night before you touched ground. You were supposed to be good at this, used to be, and now all you had gotten out of this whole circus was a bitter taste in your mouth.

The bag finally inched its way out, and you had to consciously act normal; it had been risk enough to send the sig overseas, which hadn’t been exactly legal. Besides, you weren’t in such a rush anymore. You still had a good few hours on the Soldier to pick up the gun and make it to the rock somehow.

You had only been to Gibraltar one other time, for a party; you had spent most of your time there out looking at the view, with Jack pointing at the distant lights of boats like oversized fireflies bobbing along with the current. The night had been oppressively hot, but you still had kept his arms around you, and you hadn’t stepped back into the air conditioned base and the formal conversations it came with unless it was absolutely necessary.

The British government had severely limited tourism at the rock since they built the Watchpoint, figured getting a cut of Overwatch’s budget was good enough to compensate and cleared the beach at the base almost completely. Mountain excursions were cut off at the minimum height of Barbary ape habitat, for some local flavor; yet the only thing that really separated Watchpoint Gibraltar from civilian roads was a chain link fence and, at its prime, a couple dozen heavily armed guards.

You were more than glad to find it unmanned, the outposts dark and covered in dust. This base wasn’t in Jesse’s map, it wasn’t used to store weapons or useful tech beyond maybe some medical basics and parts; if a former Overwatch agent came here it’d be out of nostalgia or for personal effects.

If you were right and the Soldier showed up here, you just couldn’t wait to curse him out to his face.


	8. nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> guilt was a very specific kind of poison

The first time he caught sight of you, he honestly thought his mind had finally cracked. You were supposed to be in Bloomington, safe and probably filling the entire town with pastries. You baked like mad when you were upset, which was to say, you baked every time you were waiting for him. Even now he could pretty much see you standing in the middle of the kitchen at three in the morning with flour streaked across your cheek. A sight for sore eyes after he pretty much crawled back home.

You were _not_ supposed to be here, buying a croissant from a street cart and chatting up the girl who sold them two nights after he took down a drug dealing ring in the area. And he knew the determined glint in your eye, the tension hiding under your casual posture. You were looking for something and for a second he had the terrible, selfish impression that that something was him.

The impulse to run was a visceral pull at his stomach that had him with his back pressed against a wall half the city away in five minutes flat. It didn’t strike him as irrational until then, when he tried to get his breathing back to normal, suddenly hyper aware of the mask; you couldn’t see his face and you had no way of knowing he was Jack Morrison. Had been. He didn’t really feel much like himself anyway, hadn’t in a while.

  
Later, curled up in a train seat, he tried telling himself that it was only someone who kinda looked like you. He fought to trick his body into catching some shut eye on the way to the next city, because he needed to at least be some semblance of functional if he didn’t want this new job he made for himself to do him in by the end of next year.

Sleep didn’t come and he damn near accidentally drained the precious battery of his tablet by keeping your picture open for a strange sort of comfort in the dark.

You were in the next town too, though; sharp and clear, standing among the onlookers in the aftermath of a mild arson attack, and in the next one he could make out your face among the arrivals in a shock of recognition while his bus pulled away from the station.

That was about when he started to dream again, or rather, when he started to remember his dreams clearly. He knew he dreamt, he kept having these vague memories of falling plaster and Gabe’s voice and screaming, bending metal and _heat_ whenever he woke up; but those were nothing like these.

Here he had your hand in his, standing side by side in Arlington, the way you had during Ana’s funeral. And he couldn’t, no matter how he tried, turn to look at you but he knew your warmth, your palm against his and fingers intertwined. Your voice was sweet as you told him exactly how much you regretted falling in love with him, how you wish you had been smart enough to love someone else, to have followed your mother’s advice and not married him. Your fingernails drew blood from his skin if he tried to pull away and he was terrified of what he would see if his neck wasn’t locked into place.

Sometimes instead, you were sitting naked over his hips, smiling into his kiss and rocking slowly against his erection. He was so hard he ached, mumbling your name like a fucking prayer, half afraid he’d come in his pajama pants until he realized he was holding the P320, awkward and askew, while he tried to pull you flush against his chest. You stroked his cock with one hand and steadied yourself over him with the other, teasing for a moment before you took him in while he stared baffled at the gun. You chuckled low at the surprised, pleased huff it pulled out of him, and your next kiss was so distracting he forgot to let go, his hand going obediently as you led it up from his side.

The last thing he always saw in that one before he startled awake was your crooked grin and the muzzle of the gun pressed against the underside of your jaw, your finger curled over his, squeezing at the trigger.

Needless to say, sleep soon began to feel like something living, something that sneaked on him and hunted down his moments of weakness whether he liked it or not.

  
He didn’t see you in Paris, now that he was sure it _was_ you, and that was sort of a relief; he wasn’t sure if you would travel overseas or how you would, if you did. He didn’t know how much time he had to leave the city and outrun your laser focus, the dead set tunnel vision you got for certain stories that used to scare the fuck out of him but now was starting to frustrating him to the point of nausea.

You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? No, you were a goddamn bloodhound, trained on the quick vigilante fame that followed his interventions. He assumed your newspaper was delighted, even if he couldn’t bring himself to look for it, to read his new identity in your words. He had witnessed the kind of brutality you could deal out, and in hindsight he understood that the only other time he’d been in your crosshairs he had gotten off much easier than anyone else in his position would have. He didn’t think he’d be so lucky this time.

He had to keep moving to catch the window of a few hours where he could lose you even if you did make it to Paris; he had taken no jobs there, had given no indication of where he could be going next. There was no reason to suspect he was headed for the rock, even if you were good enough to have already figured out he had training, Overwatch’s at that. Gibraltar was a research center, a big, glorified launching pad with no particularly interesting loot, the only thing he was really going back for himself was the duffel bag he was pretty sure he’d left in a locker. Good as new since his old one, his tried and trusted, was most likely ash in the lungs of a couple thousand swedes, depending on wind currents.

Jack thought he’d be safe there, despite your dogged nature and the memories of the place; the phantom pain of having you in his arms just on the edge of safe, looking out over the cliffs, pointing out the lights of distant boats and asking you to make a wish on them.

The universe, though, whatever higher power that existed, was hell bent on proving him he was the most unlucky fucker on the planet.

  
The rock was just as he remembered it, quiet and hot as balls, with a couple Barbaries shuffling away at his hurried pace up the road to the abandoned watch posts, and the sharp slant of the route as soon as one got pass the gates. Watchpoint Gibraltar was labyrinthine, a mess of corridors carved directly onto the rock, difficult to navigate even for him. It was by chance that he found the living quarters and by chance that he heard whoever was here with him, since footsteps didn’t echo in these low ceilings and stone hallways.

It was by some sort of fucked up poetic justice that he turned to see you, of all people, blocking the doorway with his gun trained on him.

  
“You just had to come here, didn’t you?” your voice didn’t waver but a single tear slid down your cheek, you didn’t bother wiping it away, “I was hoping…, _fuck_ , I would’ve been so glad to be wrong.”

Jack stayed frozen as the only alternative to running you over. For a second he almost gave in to the part of him that screamed to deny it all, no matter how you happened to be holding twin bags, yours far more worn than his, with the same name in embroidered block letters.

“Take off the mask,” you asked in the flattest tone he had ever heard from you, “please.”

  
He didn’t know why he was so sure you wouldn’t shoot. Your posture was much better than he recalled and you didn’t look like you were being forced to hold a live grenade like you used to whenever you’d gotten your hands on his gun before.

Jack’s mind flashed to the muzzle under your chin and your soft voice, to the blood pooling under your nails and falling in big fat drops over the green of a cemetery he hated. The dream you had nothing on the reality, he had almost forgotten how it was to have you this close; even across the room you were the prettiest, most dangerous person left in this world for him. A pinpoint around which gravitated all of his vulnerabilities.

  
“Don’t make me shoot those lockers behind you.”

You shifted in place; he could see how aware you were of your lack of shooting skills, and how it tore a humorless laugh out of you.

He reached slowly for his mask in the dead silence that followed, braced himself and watched you do the same like something in both of you was still connected, a thread tying you together through it all. He pressed the release and pulled the faceplate off.

“Goddamn it, Jack,” his name was a gasp, a breathless, sort of choked off sound from your lips, “good god _motherfucking_ damn it Jack!”

You yelled, so loud that he flinched, and you were still moving in that weird synch. You, apparently caught between stepping close and running away from him, and him stuck without knowing if he had any right to reach for you even if he was currently aching to.

Then the other, familiar voice joined in out from somewhere in the base, distant still but getting closer fast.

“Hello?” Winston’s calm, easy authority rang out across the rock, “Who’s there?”

  
Jack saw the world in slow motion; you turned, looked around and took a step back, bent your knees to lower your core. You moved just enough for him to fit through the door and bolt it off towards the road again.

It took a moment for him to hear you running after, the anger bubbling up again when you wouldn’t stop. He wanted to keep you safe for fuck’s sake, to let you be happy without worrying about his dumb ass. He wanted you to be free of him and of Overwatch, you were the most stubborn person he had ever…

You cursed loudly, far enough behind him that at first he couldn’t figure out if the sound that followed your shout was a gunshot or a snapping branch. The first true frisson of panic since he had spotted you at the breakfast cart months ago iced the blood in his veins. You didn’t know proper gun safety, you weren’t familiar with this terrain and when he stopped, winded, to check behind him you weren’t there anymore. There was violent rustling from the bushes that covered the steep slope down along the side of the rock.

Your image in his mind smiled, curled a warm hand around his and squeezed the trigger.


	9. husband

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He still thought your life would've been so much better without him.

The fall was a confusing patchwork of impressions; the weight of the swarming Barbaries, the first few meters of complete chaos, a mess of green and fur and movement, until the goddamn monkeys fell back.

You pulled the trigger and may not have hit a single furry soul with your shot but the noise at least frightened the fuckers away. Which left you alone to tumble down the side of the mountain with no certainty of where you would stop; if you stopped at all instead of meeting the sheer drop over the ocean. You didn’t know where exactly you were on the rock, not at this height, and with your luck it was sure as hell a possibility.

There was also the last clear thought of wondering if screaming and crying would be unbecoming of your age, a precious couple seconds before your head slammed hard against something. Then you couldn’t think of anything but bone deep fear as your ears started ringing and the world went dark for what felt like nothing more than a blink.

  
You hadn’t heard the scream of your name, you didn’t remember it at least, just the trampling down the mountain somewhere above you as you kept sliding head first. Trying to right yourself onto your side and curl up into the smallest possible target left you dizzy, but the terror of those goddamn monkeys returning for an encore was a far more pressing worry.

You found yourself whimpering Jack’s name as you did; not because you expected help but as a sort of comfort, like the old, battered teddy bear your mother had thrown out when you left for college. A sob, involuntary and almost painful, shook your voice. You just wanted your husband back, Jack was all you wanted, had always been. It was the saddest, scariest thought you had ever come up with now that you knew he had been alive all this time and had simply passed on the chance to get back to you.

The hand suddenly on your shoulder made you shriek both from fear and the strain of being pulled to a dead stop mid tumble. Without the momentum dragging you down, the mountain didn’t seem so steep, only a disconcertingly mild inclination that finally let you settle and stare up at the Soldier currently holding you against his chest. His breaths were rushed and there were beads of sweat over his forehead, the glaring red visor was trained on you, heavy even if you couldn’t be sure of exactly where he was looking at.

The Soldier’s arms still felt like Jack’s, warm and safe as if you had just woken up in the same bed and he had rolled over in the early morning to pull you against him.

You hiccupped his name, shoved him off and promptly lost the chips you had eaten on the plane all over the grass by his feet.

 

“At least I’m not bleeding,” you called out to Jack’s back.

The pavement by the fence was beginning to be too warm for you to be sitting on comfortably, but you really didn’t feel like moving. The Soldier on the other hand was hard at work bending and twisting the metal into an improvised doorway until your voice made him freeze.

He gazed up the mountain, looking for Winston, you assumed. And he moved fast enough to be exhausting to follow, even for Jack’s constantly hurried standards, to crouch to your level.

“That’s the third time you say that,” his hands cupped your cheeks and the visor came unsettlingly close again.

You had no memory of saying it before, but then again you didn’t really know how you had made it to the fence either. This was bad, the part of your brain that wasn’t bogged down from motion sickness or emotionally compromised tried to focus on the symptoms, not on how much you hated that fucking visor.

The Soldier seemed to think so too, his face up against yours like he could CT scan you with his stare alone; maybe he could, the idea hadn’t occurred to you but perhaps that damn red thing on his face was capable of it. You would blame the incoherence on the mild concussion later, but at the moment it felt possible; if Jack wasn’t really dead, was it really that far of a stretch?

“Come on,” Jack reached for you, his hands making to lift you up.

“Don’t, I can walk.”

You batted him away. There was no way in hell you were letting him carry you, no fucking chance you’d allow yourself to be tucked in his arms and helpless, it would only make it even shittier when he left you again. He had already tried, after all, had run past you like it didn’t matter that you had trailed him to a now illegal government facility. Then again, that had been your decision, not his.

Having to use his hands as support to get on your feet was painful enough as it was, so you stayed firm, even if you were well aware of how much you were slowing this descent down. The Soldier had to pretty much drag you behind him, scurrying along the streets, not even attempting to look inconspicuous.

  
The hotel, hidden away in a side street, only took you in after Jack passed a significant amount of extra cash into the owner’s hand. The Spanish man behind the counter constantly stole glances at you through the transaction, going as far as to ask you if you were fine as you stood there, tucked behind Jack’s body.

“Es mi marido,” you managed to nod, surprised the language hadn’t been knocked straight out of your head, “Ex… marido?”

“Still husband,” was the answer, pretty much wrestled out of the Soldier; which didn’t stop the owner from keeping his concerned eyes on you until you disappeared behind a slamming door.

You didn’t know if the threadbare couch in the tiny room was particularly comfortable or if you were just that dead tired, but you fell asleep as soon as you curled up in it.

  
…

The next time you opened your eyes, to an insistent shaking, there were familiar blue eyes looking down at you, and Jack’s far too common serious expression close enough to admire the texture of his stubble.

You were aware you were saying something, a one sided conversation you were too exhausted to fully register beyond how it made his face soften for a minute, the muscles relaxing under the hand you hadn’t realized you had reached out. The scars were new, foreign under your thumb, and whatever you had commented on them made Jack laugh, seemingly despite himself.

That was the sound you considered important enough to take back to unconsciousness.

…

  
Time finally started making some sort of chronological sense at about three in the morning, if the glow of your tablet didn’t lie. And sitting up told you exactly how the lumpy couch had wrecked your back, so badly that it cracked when you stretched; a noise like a blaring siren in the silence of the hotel. Loud enough to be immediately followed by the Soldier’s voice calling your name.

“I’m fine,” it was a half truth but you figured it was good enough.

You could feel the remnants of a headache, though you weren’t disoriented anymore, and tracking Jack’s movements was much easier, no longer vague shapes in blue and red too fast to comprehend. He wasn’t wearing the visor anymore either, something you appreciated; something that made the blurry memory of laughter and warm blue eyes press at the forefront of your mind.

“Can I touch you?” Jack whispered, his hands on the couch on either side of you as he lowered himself to your line of sight for the thousand time that day.

Your hand found the crook of his neck almost on instinct as you hummed an affirmation; you took his lacking bedside manner without complaint, his rough fingertips running along your scalp, feeling for bumps.

His pulse was steady under your palm, and you spoke even if you could already feel your breaths shortening with repressed sobs.

“You were going to leave me,” he didn’t respond, just let his hands slide down to your shoulders, squeezing gently at you upper arms, “Jack, you were going to leave me, _again_.”

The Soldier hesitated for a second; then you were falling forward, pulled into his arms until you felt your knees hit the floor between his legs, your cheek pressed against his chest as his forehead settled over your shoulder.

“I went to Arlington,” there was no stopping now, even if you had wanted, the list of things you had kept inside, festering, for more than a year, “they gave me a fucking flag… I… Jack, they wrote things about me and wrote things about you and everybody wanted a piece of you. And I just wanted to die, I just wanted to keep you to myself, I just…”

You couldn't help but be outright panting by now, taking in gulps of air so exaggerated that they shook you both, and still the wet feeling soaking into your shirt, _his_ shirt, came as a surprise; the times you had seen Jack cry could be counted on both hands.

“Why didn’t you stay at the farm, _goddamn_ it,” you didn’t know if his voice was muffled by your shirt or just the lump in his throat but Jack’s tone was so painful it finally broke you too, “why didn’t you try to be happy without me, it would’ve been so _easy_ to be happy without me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” you knew you sounded like a child, but it honestly didn’t fucking matter at this point, “I love you, Jack.”

The room was terrifyingly quiet for a minute while Jack trembled, his face pressed into your shoulder, before he finally answered, and it sounded like it was breaking his heart.

“I love you too, sweetheart. I love you too.”


	10. the aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The make up sex weakness had always gone both ways.

There was a sort of nostalgic calm to the morning, even if he hadn’t slept a wink, even if you were sitting on a chair all the way across the room and not in bed with him. It was enough to have your eyes on him, or so he told himself and tried to ignore the way his hands had been flexing intermittently for the past couple hours. He hoped you still had enough kindness for him to ignore them too.

You took a sip of coffee, looking him over the rim, sun streaming through the blinds in thin lines over your skin; Jack was a fucking mess, you made him a mess, and this was exactly what he had been trying to avoid.

If he didn’t see you, didn’t meet you, in this new world after his death, he wouldn’t have to figure out if he could walk away. He wasn’t sure he could, and not sure was pretty much admitting he was too selfish to keep you safe, _again_. But he couldn’t just leave either, not with how that had turned out barely hours ago. He couldn’t leave and couldn’t get your sleepy smile out of his head, your hand –a little uncoordinated but soft– on his new scars. ‘ _I missed you still-husband_ ’ as a little mumble in between yawns, a ‘ _you’re as handsome as ever_ ’ as your thumb followed the raised skin down across his lips.

Your desperate admission while he cried his terror into your shoulder because he had been hollow chested all damn day with the thought of you dying in this fucking town and this fucking couch. The absentminded rhythmic tapping of your wedding band against the porcelain as you did exactly what you shouldn’t once more. He would take this wherever he went, eating him alive with longing every time he closed his eyes.  


The clinking sound of metal seemed to remind you of the ring sitting on your finger, startling you out of the blank expression that was starting to worry him. You reached into the collar of your shirt and pulled a chain from around your neck, with the matching gold band dangling from it. Your measured, bare footsteps made his palms itch again; you offered the ring to him, stood close enough to brush your knees against his, and the stupid question out of his mouth was pretty much involuntary.

“Did I ever make you happy?”

  
He knew he hadn’t been there, not truly, he had been more of an ache than a husband to you; he had left even when you most needed him, trusting you to Gabriel and to Reinhardt when he should’ve stood with you. There was no one better aware that feeling bad and missing you were not enough to compensate ten years of being married to what amounted to a cardboard cutout; he just needed you to say it, to voice his failure and make this easier, however marginally.

“Yes,” you snorted, your face softening, “Jack, even so angry that I don’t have words for it, you make me happy.”

Jack sighed at the weight of the gold on his palm; your hand hovered over his and you didn’t pull away when he caught it, ran the tip of his index up to your wrist, to sit over your pulse.

“Are you gonna leave?”

He considered it, head down so he wouldn’t have to try and read your expression; you were notoriously hard to figure out when you were mad, it frustrated him like nothing else to feel like he didn’t know you at all. He wondered offhand if this was what it was like for you too.

“I don’t know,” he figured he had to force himself to tell you the truth this time, you should be able to expect that of a husband at the very minimum.

“Do you want to?”

  
That sure made him look up, you of all people should’ve known the answer. He wanted nothing more than to follow you right back to the farm and fuck what the rest of the world needed of him; he’d bring the place up again and maybe you still had time to raise a couple dogs at least.

Then again you weren’t the only thing they had ripped away from him; he had to do right by Reyes, by his team, by all those caught between the gears of Overwatch while he talked himself into thinking they weren’t getting crushed.

Your eyes told him you didn’t know that and his hesitation wasn’t helping things along.

He couldn’t help lurching forward when you tried to turn and retreat. He didn’t want to crowd you in but his hand slid steady and possessive over your waist; he had been so starved of this for so long, so far from this familiarity that it almost sent him into a second bout of tears.

“Jack…”

“I don’t ever want to leave you.”

He interrupted whatever it was that you were about to object, and felt his heart melt completely at the way your brows furrowed; you hated when he talked over you, which had been something of a work in progress for him.

“I _don’t_ , but I can’t stop and I can’t… I’ll get you _killed_ , sweetheart,” even he was surprised when he surged up, taking advantage of your silence to kiss you.

It was barely there; a slight press of his lips on yours that you chased when he attempted to apologize. Your kiss was far more honest, pulling him close by his hair with your nails raking against his scalp and a painful hiss of breath like his touch burned against your skin.

“To be fair, a pack of non-genius monkeys almost succeeded at that too,” your laugh was a wet sound, like you were holding in tears.

Your smile caught between attempting to stay mad at him and the sort of harmless digs at him you used to enjoy and the closeness was a dull ache, a black hole where his self control had been this past year.

Jack guided you to climb onto his lap, knees over the edge of the bed and almost laughed himself out of sheer relief as you let him, settling your hands around his neck. You rolled your hips into his, on instinct or on purpose he couldn’t tell right at the moment. It was so good to just allow it that he didn’t bother with the question, besides, his mind was already too busy with the breathless sigh you made at the friction.

You shoved his shoulders down, and it shouldn’t have moved him, yet it was so harsh and so sudden that it sent him onto his back to stare up at you. His blood rerouted fast, away from his brain at how you kept yourself upright over him with nothing but the strength of your thighs around his waist.

“If we have sex again I don’t think I can let you go, ok?”

Jack couldn’t shake the dumb, broad, puppy grin off his face despite the anger in your tone; he figured if you tried to slap it off he would’ve earned it. You simply tipped forward into his open arms instead, teeth teasing softly at his bottom lip.  
  
You gasped as he flipped you over, there was a part of him scared to death at the thought of you disappearing; and that animal part would rather have you under him, pinned beneath his weight. Your response was to drag your nails over his shoulders and sides so it stung just right, and goddamn you could make him hard enough to be leaking when he hadn’t even taken his clothes off.

He had no problem admitting that the tugs at your jeans were desperate and for a second he entertained the idea of simply tearing them, relishing in how you closed your eyes and smiled with something half affection half self loathing. On the other hand, you only got as far as pulling him out of his underwear before focusing on stroking him instead, mumbling obscenities as you went.

He damn near collapsed in on himself, he’d be happy just kissing you as you worked him to coming all over your chest and stomach; that had always been one of his favorites when he was particularly drained. But this time he wanted you to scream his name, to have you squirming and gasping and taking every last drop of his cum, as if he was marking you in a way.

You groaned your annoyance when he took your hand and he had to answer with his own grunt of pleasure; he rubbed the head of his cock against your clit until you called out his name like a warning. The first thrust was agonizingly slow and even pacing himself he feared he might come then and there, with you begging for him like you weren’t even aware of it.

He wasn’t gonna last but you didn’t seem to mind; you just locked him in against you with your ankles over his ass and rubbed tight circles over your clit, rushed to chase his orgasm with your own. You slipped your hand out of his grasp, pulled him into another biting kiss and he had missed this so much he couldn’t help but pound into you no matter how he wanted to make this last.

You arced up, tightening around his oversensitive cock, stealing one more shudder from him as you came. Jack stayed where he was, lost to the feeling he had been pretending he didn’t miss for the past year. He muttered praise against your lips, simply enjoying the loss of rhythm and tightening of muscles before his orgasm left him boneless and content.

You laughed and squeezed his fading erection on purpose just to see him flinch; in that moment he knew exactly what you meant, sex had always been a way to communicate the things he couldn’t say out loud.

He couldn’t let you go and even if he tried you weren’t about to let him.


	11. the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All things considered, this was a way better gig that your last job.

The email you sent Reinhardt from Gibraltar was only a couple lines long, the sort of catching up, it’d be much easier doing this on the phone kinda thing. Left out of it was any mention of the Soldier, any sort of mention of Jack; you felt bad about it, lying to Reinhardt, if only by omission, but you figured this wasn’t exactly your secret to tell.

Maybe there was a sort of pride, knowing you were the only one aware of the Soldier’s past life and that you had practically dragged that truth out of his hands; or perhaps you were just still caught in the numb anger of Jack’s decision. Either way, it wasn’t a subject you wanted to touch on, especially not with the only sort of support you still had.

You had simply written there was something you couldn’t tell him, something you hoped he could forgive you for if –when– he found out about it himself. You promised him as many baked goods as he could put away, whenever you met again, and tried not to let show exactly how emotionally unstable you were.

  
You could feel it as if it was on your own shoulders instead of Jack’s, the slight, gradual slump of guilt working its way back into your husband. It was in the quiet stirring in bed behind you, in the way he absentmindedly ran a hand through his hair, throwing an apologetic half smile in your direction.

“How long was I out?” his voice was low and rough with sleep, familiar.

“About two hours.”

His kiss was soft, a clumsy press of lips against the top of your head as he passed you on his way to the bathroom; it was almost like a ghost of your old life, like nothing had happened. You carefully bit back the surge of something dark rising in your chest at that.

  
Your message to McCree was even shorter, just five words. Then for the final sendout you dumped a recording of the Paris attack, just a minute of a cellphone video to confirm it had been the Soldier’s handy work, on the secure server you had set up for the ICIJ.

You knew it would spread like wild fire as soon as it had finished uploading and wondered offhandedly if the germans at the Zeitung would finally bend over and pay you exclusivity. The full video you sent to the CNN, who _had_ actually shelled out the cash; you had figured, after all, that if you were going to spread breadcrumbs to make the media waste time enough to give Jack an out you might as well try and live off it. Nothing too different from vigilante justice a la carte.

The chair creaked when you stretched your back, and you chose to believe it was the sound that masked Jack’s footsteps and not the lack of sleep that didn’t let you hear him coming up behind you.

  
“I’ll take you back to the farm,” Jack’s voice made you jump, sudden and hoarse right by your ear, “I can touch base once a month maybe, if possible…”

You knew the man inside out, or so you liked to think; you knew he what he was about to suggest, could guess at it, to an extent. And you were so sick of this life, of waiting for him, that the dark feeling finally spilled out of your mouth.

“I’m still not really sure I’m not gonna wake up there,” you interrupted, deceptively calm because if you raised your voice, you’d start to cry.

“ _Sweetheart_ …”

  
The soft, careful tone of his voice made venom pool over your tongue. You didn’t want his pity and you didn’t want his self condemnation, you just needed him to know this.

You were aware that it might be a low blow to say it, almost completely certain you hadn’t been the only one on the sharp edge of Reyes’ comfort, but you said it anyway like it was the only thing that could save you.

“Jack,” he hummed his response as if you couldn’t see right through his nonchalant posturing “it’s not your fault.”

The simple phrase was like a blow to his chest, the air leaving him in a visible exhalation, deflating him. He stared at you, confused, something pulling at him from the depths of his memory if the furrowed brow and the gaping was any indication.

“You were a victim too, Jack. It wasn’t your fault,” you almost regretted the words as soon as you saw the sheen of tears gather in his eyes, but were immediately surprised by his smile.

“That’s unfair,” he laughed, pulling you off the chair to hold you so close you felt the ring now hanging from his neck dig into your skin.

Jack managed to duck into the crook of your neck, his face completely out of view but the telltale drops falling over your skin.

“I know,” you admitted, “I thought the same thing when he did it to me.”

There was nothing you had wanted more –still wanted more– than taking some of the load off Jack’s shoulders, however little it might be, you had built your entire friendship with Gabriel on that core drive. That admittedly might’ve been why you had always strived to ignore the Strike Commander persona. Whether he was alive and being puppeteered by the UN or hounded by the press in death, you had been reluctant to see your husband in the statue. You had only wanted to have the moments when he was nothing but your partner, when you could support each other instead of having to keep chasing his back as he ran off to save the world.

You supposed you had left him alone in that way, as he had left _you_ alone when he died.

You ran your hands through his short hair, dragging your nails lightly over his scalp until the shivers stopped.

“I’m not gonna ask you to stop,” you pretty much mumbled into his shoulder, “I just want a shared base, Jack, one at least in the same country.”

Jack didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to react beyond the slight rocking he was already doing; you tried to keep the panic out of your voice, though you knew it was a moot point before you even opened your mouth again.

“And if you don’t come back, if you drop off the face of the Earth again, then I won’t look. I won’t even say your name again, ok?”

His arm tightened around your waist, and you could’ve sworn you heard him hold his breath, but maybe you only wanted to hear that.

“I just want a chance to be partners for real.”

“Ok,” Jack’s sigh was heavy and his eyes were rimmed red when he finally pulled away to cup your face, looking more worn down than convinced, “that’s the least I owe you.”

…

 

The screen droned on in the background, bits and pieces of Atlas News floating out the back door as you waited, phone caught between shoulder and cheek for McCree to pick up.

“Well, _someone_ deigned to call ol’ Jesse,” the line connected with a burst of noise, clinking glass and unidentifiable music, “I thought you’d forgotten about me, being a famous information broker on the run.”

“I’m not _famous_ ” the laugh that pulled out of you was so sudden you almost choked on your own cigarette smoke, “and I’m hardly an information broker, it’s much more of a ground correspondent for hire kinda deal, _and_ I called you last month.”

“So you _are_ on the run.”

Leave it to Jesse to ask the right questions, even if you weren’t exactly on the lam you were spending your last moments in the Morrison farm, at least for the time being. There was a thump coming from upstairs, you could hear it even from the back porch as clear as the curse that followed.

“And here I was thinking I could use my fugitive status to find something you’d like, a tequila maybe?”

This time you heard McCree cough, and a weird echo of the same broadcast interrupting the music of whatever bar he was in at the moment.

“Honey, don’t you dare pull me out of the Morrison souvenir list okay?”

There was shifting on his end, followed by a faux casual whisper.

“Hey, what’s this about that Soldier and the commander, huh? I’ve seen you take down stories with a single bad source, darl’, don’t tell me this girl got the jump on you.”

You sighed, not entirely out of frustration, as the chatter of the television cut abruptly from the living room. Jack’s footsteps were a firing squad in the absence, and you couldn’t help but smile at the bag now joining yours by the kitchen table. He motioned at the phone, silently asking you who it was, rolled his eyes when you pantomimed a cowboy hat and started on a final sweep of the house.

“Well, it’s the most popular conspiracy talk, it was even more suspicious if no one talked about it,” you checked that the gas was off, grunting a little at having to duck under the sink for it, “besides, she has no proof and I sort of owed her.”

McCree was quiet on the line, only the sound of a hard swallow on your ear. You on your side had to fight back the blind affection at his worry.

“It’s been five years, flaco, I can only do so much.”

“I trust you, darling”, the cheer returned to Jesse’s voice, along with the volume, “but I want mezcal instead of tequila, alright?”

You promised him his drink of choice and said your goodbyes, hurrying to hang up when you saw Jack make his way back to the kitchen with his mask in hand.

“Ready?” he asked, standing next you in the only light left in the farm.

“Sure.”

You reached for your bag and to pull him into one last kiss before he put on the visor. Jack led the way out the back door and paused for one last look at you in the summer night; you waved him off with a smile.

You had the directions to the meeting point, you could find your way there and you knew, after five years wearing down the Soldier’s reservations, that Jack would always make it back to you.


	12. press bonus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my most self indulgent chapter ever, it's just me trying on different voices for fake news articles. So I guess my version of a bonus chapter is this back to uni moment which has no weight on the story but was really fun to write.
> 
> Also Reinhardt having fun at the Soldier's expense at the end because I felt so bad about leaving him in the dark.

_Annual World Press Photo contest, originally published by World Press Photo Foundation_

 

End of an era  
Amelia Arce, Spain  
Spot News, second prize singles  
July 18

 

A woman looks on in shock at the site of the Overwatch (OW) Swiss headquarters after the explosion that destroyed it in Zürich, Switzerland.

The organization had been facing claims of negligence and was at the time undergoing investigation by the United Nations Committee. The Swiss Incident is widely recognized as the end of Overwatch despite taking place months before the ratification of the Petras Act that established any future OW activities as basis for prosecution, arrest and search.

The woman would later be identified as Jack Morrison’s widow.

Commissioned by Reuters  
Location: Zürich, Switzerland

Technical Information  
Shutter Speed: 1/2300  
F-Stop: 5.0  
Focal Length: 84.00 mm  
ISO: 100

 

…

 

_Excerpt of Daily Roundup, originally published by RadarOnline_

 

Secret Romance? Mrs. Jack Morrison’s Emotional Visit To Gabriel Reyes’ Grave

The grieving widow returned yesterday to Arlington Cemetery to pay her respects not to her husband but to his estranged partner in crime Gabriel Reyes. Radar cameras found Morrison sharing a smile with the man who is rumored to have brought her husband’s downfall.

Could she have been one of the claimed ‘personal’ reasons behind Morrison and Reyes’ big fallout?

Comments (24)  
Sort by: Best

  **Purple Helmet**

 Look, not to disrespect the dead, Morrison was handsome but have you seen Reyes? There’s no way she didn’t get on that after years of having it so close but so far  
_Reply_ _×_ _Share_ _×_ _16 Likes_

            **Orange Bottle**

            Once you go black you never go back, Wonder Bread Jack probs didn’t even have a clue  
            _Reply_ _×_ _Share_

  **Red Cactus**

 There 100% was something between them. She doesn’t look like that at her husbands grave, she’s like wet cardboard: BLAND, no expression.  
_Reply_ _×_ _Share_ _×_ _12 Likes_

 

_..._

_Excerpt of ‘Caught In The Act?? Former Ms. Morrison Goes On A Teary Visit To Arlington But Not To Check On Her Husband!’ originally published by Perez Hilton.com_

 

As you’ve likely noticed, we’ve had our eyes glued to Arlington Cemetery all week but bear with us, this isn’t nearly as sad as what we’ve seen this past few days. Or it might? No one is really sure at this point.

Everyone already knows that late Overwatch commanders Morrison and Reyes were not exactly in the best terms, but now some people are side eyeing Morrison’s widow hard as a possible source for those problems.

Among the accusations are the kinda not really there expressions we’ve seen whenever commander Morrison is mentioned. The most our widow has looked after the heart breaking funeral is sort of frazzled and annoyed at any and all questions.

But today we finally saw another face, this little sad sad smile she gifted us while paying a visit to none other than Reyes at the same cemetery, which seems weird right? That seems weird. Whatever that smile had been about it divided the internet between defending everyone’s right to grieve differently (a fair explanation) or sounding off against the probably imaginary secret affair former best friend and wife might’ve had going on behind Morrison’s back.

You can see the picture yourselves here, is that a just friends gesture or a goodbye to a secret lover?

 

…

 

_From ‘Lumpen Automata’, originally published in Political Animal Magazine_

 

[…]

Overwatch command has long been caught in the awkward middle ground of stepping over sovereignty lines and leaving local threats to local governments to deal with to the best of their ability. It has for a while now dismantled the very reason for its existence and landed itself as a war relic that we’re all just too fond of to throw out; we insist that they’re no longer necessary but we keep them on the mantelpiece so we can look at it offhandedly and be proud. We did it, good for us.

And if we keep patting ourselves on the back for resisting, for enduring, for creating this monument to the best of humanity, it’s rather easy to reduce the King’s Row attack to a free standing extremist reaction that comes completely out of thin air.

As if there hadn’t been violent clashes between local police and Omnic Rights protesters for the past few years. As if the city didn’t ignore the lives it built itself on while singing the praises of the much more agreeable, sanitized Tekharta monks.

We mourn our dead, we make promises; we start the cycle again like it’s not going to lead us to the same place. The same systemic deficiencies of old have cost hundreds more lives, omnic and human, to add to our collective conscience. And it will continue to grow a body count if British government keeps throwing out their core work force once they feel they have outlived their usefulness.

 

Overwatch will keep being too little, too late –or heavens forbid, far too much– as long as it keeps avoiding a much needed restructuration of power. […]

 

…

 

_From ‘Morrison: On the man behind the hero’, originally published in Political Animal Magazine_

 

It would fall deep into oversimplification territory to say that I was lucky to have Strike Commander Jack Morrison’s widow accept an interview. Mrs. Morrison continues to be only the most sought after voice after the Swiss Incident. Not just to offer her commentary on the explosion itself and the site, now that it’s been made obvious that it was her in the famous photo; but to shed some light on the late Jack Morrison and the high command of Overwatch as it was that fateful day. 

Beyond the tabloid gossip, here’s one of the very few in the privileged position of having known Morrison intimately as a man, not a statue.  
  


“I have said all I think about Overwatch before,” she warns me from the beginning, “several times, in several tones and with very varying degrees of obscenity.” Her laugh betrays a good humor that remains, despite the loss and the scandal. This magazine is not the first to report on the fact that Mrs. Morrison has a career sustained by her maiden name to prevent any unfortunate implications, or that said career as a journalist has not spared Overwatch from her biting wit. 

One that the Strike Commander was very well aware of, in her own words, “Jack didn’t resent it, we had a very harsh policy on not bringing the work home, or we would’ve torn each other apart a year in. He recognized the issues in his own organization,” her confession comes behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. One that almost seems to swallow her and give weight to the distant sudden tone of her voice.  
  


I don’t have to ask her what issues she refers to, they have been discussed at length before and by almost all sources. Corruption has a million different faces that all have shown themselves in the Overwatch case, and it seems to have been a problem too big even for someone as larger than life as Jack Morrison.

[…]

 

 

…

 

For Reinhardt it clicks as soon as he sees the Soldier, almost, he’s pretty sure. He remembers fighting along Jack Morrison enough to recognize the man’s body language about as well as you do; and he adds it in his head to your sudden secrecy when it comes to anything and everything you write on lately.

Torbjörn shoots him a look across the room, cocks his head barely at this stranger that calls himself Soldier 76; Reinhardt suppresses a laugh and nods in the shared suspicion. 

His doubts are resolved when one of Reyes’ kids walks into the room behind Winston; the scientist looks exhausted, he has probably work enough with organizing this recall to be pestered by McCree, but Reinhardt is momentarily distracted from his sympathy by the subject at hand.  
 

“C’me on Winston, we could use someone who can squirrel out info for us, anonymously,” Jesse seems to have already said these a million times before if Winston’s face is to be trusted, “none of us is exactly unnoticeable, but good ol’ Mrs, Morrison out there is.”

It’s damn near invisible, a minute spasm of muscle but it’s there and the flinch at the mention of you fully convinces Reinhardt of the Soldier’s identity.  
  


“Ah!” he interjects, to Winston’s subtle displeasure, “Yes, Morrison! We should call her in to help us.”

“A civilian?” the Soldier pretty much growls at him.

“A specialist!” Reinhardt has to try harder not to chuckle at the clearly visible furrow of the man’s brow. “As many hands as we can get on deck, right Winston? And she shall be safer here with us than running around alone!”

The scientist finally relents, outvoted, and Soldier 76 shifts his weight, clearly uncomfortable as if he’s weighing his options for another rebuttal. Reinhardt claps a hand on Torbjörn’s shoulder and nods as they leave the room; he’s never been above the occasional schadenfreude, and he figures this one he’s earned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All press coverage becomes a little uncomfortably worded when you don't want to give the widow an 'official' name so that has a lot to do with any unconventional turns of phrase or awkward use of Jack's last name when it comes to her.
> 
> For World Press I used the wiki guessing the base was in Zürich and I took a shot in the dark about it being July based on the art of the ruins but honestly it's all speculation on my part. Technical info is a mix of photos with the sort of lighting I wanted and my own misremembered technical photo classes.
> 
> Radar online (aka National Enquirer's page) and Perez' are from the widow's visit to Gabe's grave in chapter three, which I always thought could send hypothetical tabloids on a 'secret affair' rampage. Also I wish I could earase any and all knowledge of porn Bull culture I second handedly absorbed through trying to figure out how far I could believably take those rumors.
> 
> Lumpen Automata is a very pretentious name for that one article that cause the fight between Jack and the widow after the King's Row uprising and the next one is that interview in the Morrison kitchen that Jack found in the safehouse in Switzerland.
> 
> And then a hypothetical on Reinhardt messing with Soldier, assuming he even joins the recall in this continuity; which would be it's own laundry list of problems when it comes to the relationship with the widow, but I just wanted my big crusader to have some fun.


End file.
